This invention relates generally to a heat dissipating and vibration isolating mounting arrangement, and, more particularly to a vibration isolated cold plate assembly for use in effectively mounting electronic components.
In today's electronic equipment, most of the electric power utilized in operating such equipment is converted into unwanted heat, with only a small portion of that power being converted into useful energy. This results in an undesirable temperature rise in the equipment, the magnitude of which depends upon the amount of heat dissipated by the equipment and/or its mount to the environment. In every day electronic equipment little special design effort is given to providing the required heat transfer capacity since there is normally sufficient space around the various electronic components for adequate cooling to take place.
In certain specialized electronic equipment, however, such as electronic equipment for use within aircraft where space and weight requirements are of prime importance, these electronic components or equipment are generally miniaturized in order to meet these stringent space and weight requirements. This reduction in size of the components results in much greater heat density and the associated problem of transferring the heat from the components. An additional problem, however, also exists when such electronic components are used within high speed aircraft. This problem is the vibration created during aircraft flight which may adversely affect the operation of aircraft electronic components.
Consequently, a great need has arisen in providing a mount capable of not only dissipating excess heat from the electronic components, but also reducing the adverse effects of vibration associated with the utilization of electronic components in such high speed aircraft. Unfortunately, most mounts for electronic equipment are either too bulky or lack the ability to effectively dissipate heat while simultaneously shielding the equipment from excess vibration.
The volume occupied by cold plates and vibration isolating racks, although essential to the overall performance of the electronic components, is non-productive space, in the sense that this volume cannot be used for packaging the functional circuitry. It would therefore be extremely desirable if the vibration isolation function as well as the heat dissipating function could be incorporated into a single unit thereby saving a substantial amount of volume which could be used for additional electronic components. As stated above, heretofore, a reliable, compact vibration isolated cold plate for use with electronic equipment has been lacking.